One conventional network arrangement, e.g., an Ethernet network, permits a certain percentage (e.g., 75 percent) of network bandwidth to be set aside for reservation to one or more communication streams. In this arrangement, the transmissions of frames in the streams that have such reservations may be timed in such a way as to evenly distribute their transmissions within an observation interval, subject to other communication that may interfere with the communication streams, and based upon the total amount of bandwidth that is actually reserved. For example, according to this arrangement, if the total available bandwidth is 1 gigabit per second and the certain percentage is 75 percent, 750 megabits per second are available for possible reservation, and the total bandwidth that is actually reserved is 100 megabits per second, then the arrangement will allocate 10 percent of the total frame transmission time to transmission of frames belonging to streams that have reservations, and the transmissions of such frames will be evenly distributed (subject to the rules of the transmission medium and pending completion of transmission of already-in-flight or higher priority frames) within the allocated 10 percent of the total frame transmission time and the interval over which the bandwidth reservation is specified (e.g., the observation interval). Consequently, in this example, 90 percent of the total frame transmission time will be allocated to transmission of frames belonging to streams that do not have reservations, or more than 90 percent if the reserved streams consume less bandwidth than were reserved for them, or to idle time. As can be appreciated, although this arrangement may be capable of placing a definable upper bound on the latency experienced by frames belonging to streams that have reservations, depending upon the particular bandwidth reservations, it may also increase the average and/or maximum latency experienced by such frames, especially as frames of reserved streams arrive at the egress port from multiple queues into which they are added asynchronously, and/or as frames accumulate transmission jitter due to their traversal of multiple network hops (sometimes referred to as multiple hops of fan-in in the presence of interfering frames).
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, it is intended that the claimed subject matter be viewed broadly.